


Tooth and Claw

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Language Barrier, Trolls on Earth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 08:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6947206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Intergalactic war breaks out between the Heiress's camp and the Empress, but Karkat's assigned to guard a xenoologic facility on some out-of-the-way planet with no sentient life to speak of.</p><p>That is, until he finds out it speaks for itself.</p><p>Stuck with an injured alien on his couch and his friends scattered across the galaxy, Karkat reaches out to an unexpected source of help: the girl who had an awkward crush on him four, five sweeps ago, and her startlingly impressive survival skills under fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> CW: This chapter contains some dehumanizing language--specifically, a person is repeatedly referred to as _it_ rather than _he_ \--and vague descriptions of a pretty gross and bloody injury.
> 
> Modern bear traps are not actually designed to break bone, but Karkat's are Alternian, so, like, you know. Why wouldn't they?

“YAAAAA _AAAGGGGHHHHHHH…!”_

Karkat flailed awake, vascular bladder pounding in his mouth, and assumed he’d literally screamed himself from daymare into consciousness like the highblooded heroine of one of those tacky horror movies Gamzee liked. “Fuck,” he muttered, and pressed a finger to his throat just to see how fast his pulse was racing.

The scream punched right through his walls again, though it was lower, this time: almost as much a despairing groan as a cry of pain and terror.

He froze. Whatever it was, it was outside, and not a figment of his sopor-deprived thinkpan.

 _“Fuck,”_ he said again, and reached for his sickle.

The walls of his temporary military hive were solid, but only barely so. It was a temporary, prefabricated structure, not meant to stand longer than a sweep or so, proof against rain (barely) and sun (more so) but not against the undocumented wild fauna of this forested alien planet.

Or against, say. Belligerent trolls who didn’t like his face.

Karkat waited, prongs tight around his sickle, but nothing plowed through the walls or knocked his hive over. He didn’t hear any other voices, either; just the one, and it was tapering off, folding in on itself. He should let it die out on its own, check on the cholerbear traps he set for security around his hive in the evening. That was exactly what he was going to do.

Two minutes later, still crouched in exactly the same position, blood chill in his veins and sweat fear-sour, he growled to himself, “Fuck _me,”_ and went out.

The hive he’d built for the duration of this assignment wasn’t big, designed for one troll—one and a half, at best. The trees, tall, the size of hivestems, crowding in thick around him with their weird, needle-thatch leaves layered like armor and smelling somehow of winter, dwarfed the building, made Karkat feel unwanted and foreign and terribly small. The dirt was soft, dark, and faintly fragrant in the night, especially after a rain. A cold, burbling stream ran near enough by that he need never worry for water.

He hated it, but what else was new?

The important thing was that the trees mostly blocked the sun. This planet’s small yellow one didn’t burn like Alternia’s, but it still hurt his fucking eyes, and that wouldn’t help at all as he made his best guess at direction and started walking.

Whatever he’d trapped, he could still hear it now that he was outside, but it was quieter. He caught low, whimpering noises that could’ve been either animal sounds or words. That he couldn’t tell just made his horns prickle. Eerie.

It wasn’t far, and he tightened his grip on his sickle. The source of the noise grew louder as he approached, but then it cut off abruptly, leaving him in silence but for the stream. Shit. Had it heard him?

What did it matter if it had? It was trapped, hurt, probably delirious with pain, and he was armed and fully mobile. If it was some kind of animal, fine. He’d put it out of its misery, maybe have something better than grubtack to eat for a couple days. If it was a troll who’d decided Karkat’s mutant hive was driving down the local real estate values…meh.

(If it was a troll, he’d call a doctorturer. He wasn’t heartless, and anyone who’d ended up on _this_ sorry planet was making a statement of good faith regarding the hemospectrum.)

He’d set this trap in a small clearing near the stream, knowing that was a good place to expect food animals and also an obvious landmark and aid to anyone trying to find his hive. Probably an animal, though. A troll would have said something by now, snarled a desperate challenge or asked for help.

Steeling himself for anything, he stepped through the trees to see what he’d caught.

It was a troll.

It wasn’t a troll.

It lay on its side half in the dirt and half behind a tree, the only cover it could get to, with the trap chained to a stake in the ground. Its chest rose and fell rapidly, but it was silent, and it watched Karkat with red eyes set in a pale, almost green-tinged face. No fur to speak of, but it had some kind of covering on, not unlike the gowns patients wore in inhospitals before they got culled.

It had hands like a troll. In one of them, it held a broken stick, jagged point out towards Karkat. The last weapon of the desperate.

It had legs like a troll, too. In general, it was pretty much troll-shaped, though the nose was kind of weird. But its skin was white, basically, kind of a pinkish-cream, and it had no horns, and—

And it bled red.

He hadn’t steeled himself enough.

Karkat stared at the mess of its broken leg. He hadn’t bought the scariest traps, because what the fuck kind of good was a trap that basically severed its captive’s paw off, how would it hold it? But it was still a cholerbear trap, and it sprung heavy and mean, and the teeth were almost as long as Karkat’s thumb. Not that there were cholerbeasts around, but paranoia was a hard habit to break. The…thing, it wouldn’t be using that walkstrut any time soon.

Its eyes—weird, the sclera were white—flicked to his sickle, back up to his face, down to the sickle. The stick shook wildly in its hand. It dropped it.

“Fuck _me,”_ it said, and curled its trembling arm over its head, hid its face.

Except it didn’t really speak, of course. The sounds that came out of its mouth (weird, _weird,_ its teeth were flat, lips barely darker than its colorless face) didn’t form any recognizable trollish syllable, let alone standard Alternian. But the tone, the _tone,_ that was Karkat all over, he’d said the same thing not five minutes ago, how could he not recognize it? It was the sarcastic fear-pain-despair of someone with nothing to lose but pride, and little fucking enough of that.

“Holy fuck,” he breathed. “You’re sentient.”

It flinched when he stepped forward, breath hissing in—shit, its throat must have tightened like his would, it was scared, it _knew what was happening to it_ —and Karkat froze again. Carefully, he put the sickle down and cleared his throat. The…the _alien fucking creature_ paused, and then peeked slowly from under its arm. It frowned—frowned! It frowned, unimpressed, and looked at Karkat again, like, seriously, did you expect it to fall for that?

“Yeah, okay, I’d call bullshit, too,” he agreed, retrieved his weapon, and flung it into the woods.

(Shit, he’d have to come back for that later. He only had one spare, and it was the lame one he’d used to swing around all hotshot threshecutioner-to-be when he was six sweeps old and a moron. Oh, how he wished he could ever bear to throw out Homes Smell Ya Later.)

Karkat showed his empty hands to the creature, whose red _redRED_ eyes were wide, now, and confused. He ventured another careful step and it cringed again, but it kept watching him, and it just swallowed at the next one. Karkat could see its squawk blister bob.

It stopped him again with a bark— _hei!_ —when he reached the borderlands of arm’s reach and said something unintelligible. It was curling in tighter, protecting its injured leg.

“Are you trying to communicate with me? Because sorry, bucko, I have no goddamn idea what pea-sized orbs of hardened bivalve secretions of wisdom you’re trying to convey, here.” Hands still raised, Karkat lowered himself slowly into a crouch, keeping his eyes on the trapped alien’s face. “Are you going to let me help you or not?”

He hadn’t even realized he intended to, but. Welp! Looked like he was still the softest idiot this side of tyrian.

It still frowned at him, so Karkat rolled his eyes, pointed to the trap, and then mimed it opening like said bivalve. “Get it? Come on, this is what you want, right? Wheeee, happy, happy freedom. Say something, hurry up, I have valuable sleep to be getting back to before I attend to a night full of matters of gross importance.”

Haha.

The creature’s eyes twitched a little as they bounced between Karkat’s eyes, as it tried to get a read on him. Eventually, it looked down at the trap, then back up to him, and croaked something. Rising intonation; it sounded like a question. There was something on its ankle; why hadn’t he seen that before?

Karkat nodded and did his best to look, he didn’t know, earnest and solemn and not like someone slowly realizing exactly how much trouble he was getting into. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s cool, bizarre alien thing I found in my backyard. I won’t hurt you.”

After one more obnoxious moment of hesitation, it scooted carefully onto its back and bent its knee so Karkat could reach its foot. Whatever it said—and it _was_ speaking, those weren’t random grunts, they were patterned consonants and vowels even though they sounded distinctly alien—carried rough, reluctant acceptance. Do your worst, it said, and clenched its fist in the dirt.

A set of alarmingly official-looking cuffs dangled uselessly from that wrist. Its ankle, the one that wasn’t caught in Karkat’s trap, had some kind of fancy mechanical shackle-device locked around it.

He was so fucked.

He pressed down on the sides of the trap and it disengaged. His new friend let out a strangled cry— _shit!_ Karkat translated in his head—but pulled its leg out of range quick enough. It rolled onto its side again and whispered what Karkat would bet were obscenities as it pulled its leg up, moved its hands, let them hover there without touching the broken skin. Karkat tossed the trap heavily aside and it snapped closed again around nothing. The creature squeezed its eyes and mouth shut, pulse racing in its throat.

“Okay,” said Karkat, kneeling over it again. “Okay, let me…”

He wasn’t quite as sure what to do now. It couldn’t walk, could it? Wherever it had come from (escaped, whispered the voice in the back of his mind that was a lot smarter than he felt like being right now and, if it was so smart, probably should have done a better job diverting him from this course of action), it wouldn’t be able to get back there (or away) on its own. It opened its eyes a slit and watched him, breathing too fast again through its nose.

It didn’t look particularly trusting, but did it really have too much choice right now? “Let me help you stand,” he said, using the calm, firm voice that had worked best on Gamzee, back then, eyes open and steady.

He showed his hands again, motioned vaguely towards the creature’s shoulders and lifted his palms, jerked his head back towards his hive. It stared at him like he’d grown a second head that was even uglier and stupider than the first, then closed its eyes and breathed out. Copied Karkat’s nod.

“Okay,” Karkat said. It didn’t help him out as much as he might have liked, but it let him raise it into a sitting position, slung its cuffed arm over his shoulders, made no noise but a tight hiss as he hauled them both cautiously to their feet. The thing wasn’t the least bit steady, but then, why would it be. He took a wary step, and it followed him with a little hop and managed not to fall over.

What the fuck, why was it taller than him.

“Five minute walk,” Karkat told it, though that was at the best of times, not half-dragging a broken-legged alien corpse through the trees. Fuck, there wasn’t even a path, what was it going to do over the roots? “Can you make it?”

It looked at him, huffed (it made its near-white hair—was it hair, fur after all?—puff out of its face), and took the next hop forward itself.

As they made their excruciatingly slow procession through the woods, it started babbling again, all long vowels and dull consonants. It hardly inflected as it spoke, and Karkat wasn’t sure if that was fatigue setting in or a feature of alien language.

“Again, I still have no idea what you’re saying, but I’d bet my left shame globe that it’s something stupid. Concentrate on hobbling, shitstain, your titanic ass is heavy enough.”

It did.

It started flagging about halfway home, leaning more and more on Karkat, breath harsher and more labored. It almost slipped on a root and it took all the threshecutioner training Karkat had had and a little he hadn’t to steady them, to keep the asshole from cracking its skull open against a tree, because that was obviously exactly what it needed.

It mumbled something and started to slide down, but Karkat gripped its shoulder tight and growled, “No. No rest for you. Come on, we need to get you inside, you’re bleeding and probably some kind of alien fugitive, fuck my hot mutant life. Come on. Come on, bro, I know it hurts, but work with me, you can’t stay here.”

He was slipping into moirail mode again and felt a momentary guilty pang, but, fuck, Gamzee had dumped his ass sweeps ago and they were all over it, they were friends again. The war ensured that much.

The—God, he needed a better word than creature or alien—the whatever-it-was responded to the softness, at least, but only to shake its head. Sweat beaded on its forehead to drip too quickly down its nose, and, yeah, shit, it didn’t look too good anymore. This was probably too much to ask of it. It looked like it was going to pass out.

“Okay,” Karkat said. “Okay. Don’t…don’t freak out on me, okay?”

He steadied it with one hand, then slid the other down, slowly, the plane of its back. It looked up, alarmed and suspicious, but Karkat stopped only halfway down, bent his legs, moved the arm formerly known as the-one-that-was-steadying-it to the backs of its knees, and picked it up off the ground, grunting only once at the weight.

Funny. It was lighter than he’d thought it’d be.

It only had the energy for a surprised wheeze, apparently, and as Karkat laboriously carried it home, it started talking again, low but insistent, annoyed. Also, worryingly shaky.

“What. Are you asking why I didn’t carry you before, you lazy sack of snow farts?” Karkat broke tree cover and made the way up to his hive with unrestrained relief. “I didn’t want you to rip my ear off with your flat, alien teeth. Who knows what diseases you have.”

It understood none of that, obviously, but Karkat took its silence to mean that was fair. It was shaking really badly now, and it kept its eyes closed as they marched on.

There weren’t many places to put it inside. Karkat made for a chair at the kitchen table, but then changed his mind and carried it to the couch instead. It was going to make a mess and bleed over everything, but he didn’t care at this point. He didn’t trust it not to fall right the fuck off anything greater than a horizontal surface, and Karkat’s ablution trap was too small to work in. “Stay,” he said, pointing, and it raised a pale eyebrow but didn’t seem inclined to move. Karkat was beginning to suspect the pallor of its face wasn’t a sign of health.

He got the medical kit from his bathroom, a pitcher of water and some towels, and stalked back to the entertainmentblock, where his guest now watched him with half-lidded, glassy eyes. Karkat bit his lip, then went to fill a glass of water for it.

“Come on.” He coaxed it upright as gently as he could. “Drink this, and then you can lie down again.”

It eyed him with baleful, useless suspicion, but obediently downed half the glass. Karkat didn’t want to risk it throwing up on him, so he didn’t push the matter.

He looked at the mess of the poor creature’s leg, let out a breath, and went to work.

Whatever else he could say about the thing, it put up a good front. It trembled when he cleaned the wound first with water, and only yelped aloud once when he applied real disinfectant, but it sunk clawless fingers into the cushion beneath it and tried to swallow a thousand muted pain noises as Karkat worked. He was sure its leg was broken; he didn’t know how badly, and he didn’t have the medical knowledge to set it, let alone the materials for a cast or a splint. Hell, he wasn’t sure it’d even be able to keep the leg. Infection was a dangerous thing, and it’s not like he ever cleaned the traps.

In the end, all he could do was stitch, bandage it, and prop its foot up on the frondrest to keep the wound elevated, and the look it gave him when he finished seemed to say that it knew it needed more than that, but understood, anyway.

“Fuck,” he told it, and it nodded, agreeing.

Karkat cleaned up as well as he could, wiping red blood before it could stain and giving up when the angle was too weird. It was still shaking, great huge non-stop shudders, so Karkat grabbed his one set of extra sheets and two field blankets and carefully tucked it in. He wasn’t sure if the glance it gave him was grateful or just delirious.

“Hei,” it said again as he got up, and its voice was hoarse now. It sounded kind of male. He couldn’t be sure, though; who knew, with aliens?

“Yeah?” he replied.

It wormed one arm out from under the blankets, then pointed at itself. Said something.

Karkat frowned. “Devuh?”

It repeated it, stretching out the vowel, eyes weirdly intense and focused for all its tremors.

“Dev,” Karkat tried again, then made a face and shook his head. “Daaaave. Dave. Dave? What the fuck does that mean.”

It didn’t answer, but pointed to Karkat. Waited.

“…Oh. Oh! That’s your name. Fuck. Fuck, okay.” If it was going to learn any two words, they were going to be those. _Fuck_ and _okay._ Karkat took a deep breath, then pointed to his own chest. “Karkat.”

“Kerkat?”

“Karkat, douchewaffle. Kaaaar-kat.”

“Karkat,” it repeated properly this time, then snorted. “Kar kat,” it said again, then something that sounded like _beep beep meow_.

“Whatever you say, inexplicable honking purrbeast,” Karkat said, and then tucked its arm carefully back under the covers and went to get his husktop, worrying his lip with his teeth.

It had a name. It had a _name,_ it recognized itself, understood its identity to be distinct from its environment. That made it a, a…not a thing, but a person. Not an animal. An alien, yes, but one with personhood.

And he still didn’t know what to do about the Imperial ankle tracker.

\--

In the end, he did what any good leader (ha!) knew to do: He decided to delegate.

Karkat signed into Trollian for the first time in—probably half a sweep, fuck. Most of his friends’ names were greyed out and unreachable. They were scattered now, of course. Alive, somehow, all twelve, but deployed in different parts of the galaxy, given different tasks.

Ten sweeps, all of them. He didn’t even know how.

The one troll he knew could help wasn’t online, but Karkat wouldn’t have gone near him with a ten-foot cylindrical poking device. He had planned from the beginning to go for second-best, and wasn’t that just typical of him? He stared at her idle trolltag and tried not to loathe his own scummy scumbag existence.

He hadn’t spoken to her in so long. Did she hate him, now? Would she hate him for what he was about to ask of her?

\-- carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] started trolling arsenicCatnip [ AC ] --

CG: HEY. NEPETA, I KNOW IT’S LATE, BUT ARE YOU AWAKE?  
CG: I MEAN. LEIJON.  
CG: SHIT, I DON’T EVEN KNOW, MAYBE YOU’VE GOTTEN YOUR ADULT TITLE BY NOW. FUCK KNOWS I’VE HAD MY HEAD UP MY LEPROUS WASTE CHUTE LONG ENOUGH TO HAVE MISSED SOMETHING AS DRAMATIC AS THAT.  
CG: I BET YOU’RE SOMETHING AWESOME LIKE “THE HUNTRESS” OR “MEWDERER” OR “PROWLSPY KILLCLAW.”  
CG: I PROBABLY DON’T EVEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO TALK TO YOU. I MEAN, I KNOW I DON’T, BECAUSE I’VE BEEN OFF THE FUCKING GRID THIS LONG WITHOUT EVEN SAYING ANYTHING AND THAT’S A SHITTY THING TO DO AS SOMEONE WHO CALLS HIMSELF YOUR “FURRIEND,” BUT ALSO BECAUSE YOU’RE A BIG, STRONG OLIVEBLOOD NOW AND MAYBE ZAHHAK FINALLY CONVINCED YOU THAT THAT SHIT MATTERED.  
CG: I MEAN, LOOK. LOOK WHERE I AM NOW! GEE WHILLIKERS, I GUESS IT DOES AFTER ALL.  
CG: GEE WHISKERS?  
CG: MAYBE I SHOULD TRY HARDER TO GET YOUR ATTENTION. YOU KNOW, SOUND A LITTLE MORE DESPERATE. WOULD THAT MAKE YOUR MOIRAIL APPROVE THIS TRANSMISSION? I MEAN APPURROVE.  
CG: KARKAT ABASES HIMSELF BEFORE THE POWERFUL PURRBEAST, SOFT BELLY BITS POINTED SKYWARDS SO THAT SHE COULD RUTHLESSLY SAVAGE HIM AND FEAST ON HIS ENTRAILS, ALL IN PROPER SUBMISSION TO HER MIGHT. BY EXPOSING HIMSELF IN THIS OBSCENE FASHION, HE HOPES TO GAIN HER AUDIENCE—NAY, EVEN A SUBTLE TWITCH OF HER UNPARALLELED AURICULAR SPONGES—BUT PERHAPS HE EXPOSES NOTHING BUT HIS OWN FECES-SMEARING IDIOCY BY ENGAGING IN THIS STUPID DUMB GAME FOR GIRLS??  
AC: :33 < omg karkat???  
CG: OH SHIT YOU’RE ACTUALLY HERE  
CG: KARKAT PREPARES FOR AN INUNDATION OF STUPIDITY SO LARGE, SO PROFOUNDLY SWOLLEN WITH THE KIND OF BARELY POSTPUPAL SCHOOLFEEDER INANITY RARELY SEEN OUTSIDE OF A SUBJUGGLATOR FARCE, THAT HE WILL NEED A FULL OXYGEN TANK AND FUCKING FAKE SEADWELLER WEBBED FOOT ENHANCEMENTS TO SURVIVE THE DELUGE. FOR LONG ENOUGH TO GET A WORD IN, ANYWAY.  
CG: FUCK. SHOULD I BE USING ASTERISKS?  
CG: *HE MEANS, SHOULD KARKAT BE USING ASTERISKS TO DENOTE HIS DEDICATION TO THE ROLEPLAY?*  
AC: :33 < omg  
AC: :33 < no dont start this  
CG: YES.  
AC: :33 < no!  
CG: YES NO YES YES YES!  
AC: :33 < shut the hell up you stupid wiggler and tell me whats wrong!!

Karkat stilled. Was he that obvious, or was Nepeta just…perceptive, as an adult?

Had she always been?

CG: WHO SAYS THAT SOMETHING’S  
AC: :33 < its the middle of the day  
AC: :33 < you k33p hinting that theres something you want to say to me but you havent said it  
AC: :33 < and  
AC: :33 < you nefur open up to me about things like blood color bothering you  
AC: :33 < i dont think you would unless something was going on!  
AC: :33 < what do you n33d, i can help  
AC: :33 < also no i dont have a title yet but im pawsitive im close! you can still call me nepeta :33  
CG: OK, UH. ALRIGHT.  
CG: HAS. EQUIUS TAUGHT YOU MUCH ABOUT, UH. TAKING THINGS APART THAT COULD POSSIBLY EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE AND KILL YOU INSTANTLY YET PROBABLY STILL WITH A LOT OF GRUESOME PAIN?  
AC: :33 < um some!  
AC: :33 < hed really be a safur bet but i suppaws id be alright in a pinch  
AC: :33 < why me and not him?  
CG:   
CG: IT’S  
CG: PURRSONAL

God. Please let her think it’s a weird sex thing, please let her think it’s a weird sex thing. If she pushed any more, Karkat would have to sign off and give up, turn the alien in to the authorities, as sick as that made him feel.

Instead, she winked offline without warning. He gaped for a moment, but before he could feel anything, she started trolling him again, privately.

AC: :33 < sollux promised me that this is a secure channel  
AC: :33 < karkat are you ok???  
CG: I  
CG: I NEED HELP.  
AC:   
AC: :33 < eta 45 minutes

\-- arsenicCatnip [ AC ] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] --

Karkat let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, folded his arms on his seated work-slash-studyplane, and sank into them. He was exhausted, and the night hadn’t even begun. He picked his head halfway up and then typed with two fingers.

CG: THANKS, NEPETA.

\-- carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] is now offline –-

He sighed, sat up, and turned in his chair to look at the pale shadow—Dave, Dave, its name was Dave—unconscious on his couch. Its breathing was slow, now, and even, but its face still looked drawn. Little spots of blood seeped through the bandage on its leg, darkening to rust as they dried.

It would be stolen Imperial property. At best.

“You sad, bastard fuck,” said Karkat in the softest voice he had. “It’ll be a Twelfth Perigee miracle if any of us get out of this alive.”

It just kept breathing, and Karkat turned away to browse the public wildlife reports for this planet and wait guiltily for Nepeta.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nepeta arrives and takes this bullshit in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly more graphic description of Dave's booboos. Otherwise, not much else to warn for, I think!

\-- carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] began trolling arsenicCatnip [ AC ] --

CG: ALSO, IF YOU FIND YOU’VE GOT A MINUTE WHEN YOU GET HERE, DO YOU THINK YOU COULD SNIFF AROUND FOR MY SICKLE? I, UH. DROPPED IT. IN THE WOODS.  
CG: YOU DON’T HAVE TO, IT’S JUST. IF YOU HAPPEN TO STUMBLE ACROSS IT, GIVE ME A HOLLER OR SOMETHING.  
CG: AND THANKS. AGAIN, I MEAN. FOR COMING, IF NOTHING ELSE.  
CG: I  
CG: I REALLY FUCKING MISSED YOU. ALL OF YOU.  
CG: I’M SORRY FOR DROPPING OFF THE FACE OF THE GALAXY. I JUST  
CG: IT  
CG: HAHA, OK, GOOD TALK! NEPETA, SEE YOU SOON. BYE.

\-- carcinoGeneticist [ CG ] ceased trolling arsenicCatnip [ AC ] --

Twelve minutes to go, and someone knocked on his door. Karkat made a noise like a trodden squeakbeast in a megaphone and woke Dave, who started trying to move but then groaned, head thrown back, obviously hurting.

“Sh-shit, sorry—” Karkat began, but then the knock came again, quick and urgent.

“Karkat, it’s me!”

All the panic drained out of him at once. “Oh, thank fuck,” he said, and Dave looked at him through a visible haze of pain and still managed to look faintly doubtful.

Karkat flopped a hand at him in a distracted but hopefully reassuring manner and tottered to his feet. Graahh, stiff, he’d been hunched on the floor over his husktop too long with his dorsal muscles too tense, he was going to develop troll arthritis before he was fifteen. He rubbed at the small of his spine and grumbled his way to the door, only checking once to make sure it really was Nepeta and not a trap, and—

Well, here she was.

First time he’d seen her since Feferi’s Ascension party.

The door opened and the first thing he noticed was that she was still two inches shorter than him, and that was all he really had time for before he was bracing for a tacklehug. Nepeta didn’t move to pounce, though; she just offered an awkward smile two shades off from the bright, feral grin he remembered and shifted the two heavy packs she was carrying under one arm like they were slain featherbeasts.

“Hi, Karkat! Um, long time no see, hehe.” She didn’t seem to know what to do with herself for a moment, but then she stuck her hand out. It held his sickle. “I found this lion around outside on my way here, so I thought you’d be happy to see it. I brought my medkit, too, beclaws I wasn’t sure…”

Like a graceless, guileless schoolfeeder avoiding her hatchmate’s gaze, her eyes wandered past his shoulder, and Karkat winced as they widened, as she caught sight of Dave. He ignored the sickle and put his hands on her shoulders immediately, lowering his voice to an insistent rasp.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I should have said something before you came, but I didn’t—I didn’t know what to do. It—he _talks,_ Nepeta. He, he’s a person, I think, and he bumblefucked his way into one of my traps, and I don’t know what to do.”

“What is it?” she whispered, pupils widening like a cat’s. Better than going slitted, he told himself. Maybe. “I mean, what is he?” she corrected herself, and Karkat felt almost hopeful.

(Also, a little silly for making assumptions about Dave’s sex—if aliens even had sexes!—but fuck him, he wasn’t going to _check.)_

Still, he gulped. “Nepeta, I have no fucking clue. I can’t find his species anywhere in this planet’s records. He might be an import? He’s…he’s got an Imperial tracker on.”

She drew herself up straight and took a deep breath in, eyes still fixed on Dave. Karkat risked a glance back. The idiot was trying to sit up, ashen-faced with the effort, pinned under Nepeta’s stare. Defiant and terrified and knowing it was all futile, he had nothing left to fight or run with.

“Well, this is a furry fine catastrophe you’ve gotten yourself into!” Nepeta said, gently pushing Karkat back, setting the sickle aside. “But I purromised I’d help. Let me see what I can do.”

God. God. Taking a temporary leave of his otherwise razor-keen senses, Karkat abandoned pride to the wind and hugged his friend. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, and made half-hearted plans to deny it all come evening.

Nepeta giggled, apparently surprised, and curled her free arm around him in return. “I’m happy to see you, too, Karkat,” she said, “even under these kind of upsetting purrcumstances!” She thumped his back twice; fuck, she was _strong,_ how could he forget. “Now step back and let me do what you asked me here for, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” He let her go and felt almost reluctant about it. “Uh, but I’m still sorry.”

“You can apawlogize later, Karkitty. I’ll be all ears.” Nepeta turned towards Dave, who at least looked a little less immediate fight-or-flight and a little more completely stumped by these weirdos. She started to shift forward to take a step, but thought better of it and looked at Karkat again. “Can you introduce us? I think it would put him more at ease, since he’s already a little furmiliar with you.”

“Right.” Karkat cleared his throat and stepped up next to her, gesturing to her like one of those domestic chore-runner lusii highbloods like Equius kept around. “Uh, Dave? This is Nepeta. Ne-pe-ta,” he pronounced more slowly. Dave said nothing, just looked between the two of them with feverish worry. “Nepeta, this is Dave. Dave, she’s _okay,_ okay?”

Nepeta smiled, close-mouthed, and waggled her manual digits at him. “Hi, Dave. Karkat asked me to help, okay? I’m a furriend.”

“‘Okay,’” Dave repeated to himself softly, and Karkat’s bloodpusher flipped. He was right, Dave _was_ capable of picking up their language! He looked at the two of them one more time, propped up on his cuffed arm, and then breathed out. A little louder, he told them, “Okay,” and then glanced at the wall and muttered something unintelligible.

His eyes darted to Nepeta again when she began to move, but she approached him with deliberate slowness, making sure her free hand was in sight the whole time. Karkat didn’t have a hot caffeinated bean-derived beverage table to get in the way, so she simply knelt beside the couch, put her packs down, and showed him both empty hands. With him half-sitting and her on the floor, Dave was significantly taller than her.

“Hi, Dave,” she said again, with the kind friendliness she offered to animals she wasn’t going to kill. Without any sudden movements, she lifted her fingers towards his flinching face, but just stopped there before touching him. He blinked at her, perplexed, and she just smiled. “See? The fierce huntress is mewrciful, too. I won’t hurt you, Dave. Okay?”

He watched her a moment longer, shifted back diagonally against the frondrest and dorsal cushion to stay marginally upright, and shook her hand with a mystified expression. She laughed, surprised again, and returned the shake firmly.

“I sort of thought he would sniff my fingers,” she said, and eased Dave back down. He went with barely a huff, but she paused there and tilted her head. “Karkat, I see you taped up his leg, but did you check him for other injuries?”

“What? Uh, no, I didn’t see any.” He came over to sit beside her, then scooted back a little when it looked like Dave wanted more space. “Why, is he still fucking spigoting blood somewhere?”

“No, I just…” Nepeta bit her lip, then tapped Dave’s shoulder to get his attention. “Dave? Your hand, is it okay?”

She lifted her own and patted the back of it, watching him. His eyes tightened a little, and he glanced away.

Well, that wasn’t suspicious. “Dave?” Karkat prodded, brows knotting.

Dave tilted his face towards the ceiling and sighed, broadcasting frustration and a little shame—maybe at being so easily read—and drew his other arm from beneath the blankets, the one that wasn’t cuffed. The wrist was swollen red and purple, and, shit, he hadn’t been using that arm at all, how had Karkat not noticed?

Nepeta just frowned and nodded seriously. “Okay, I think we’ll need to set that, too, and get the cuffs off the other one, but furst things furst. Show me his leg?” And before Karkat could move, she added, “Dave, we need to look at your leg now, okay?”

She gestured, and Dave nodded and closed his eyes. Have at, buddies, he was just gonna chill.

“When did you get so goddamn good at this,” Karkat wondered aloud, moving to the other end of the couch so he could unroll the gauze from Dave’s mangled walkstrut.

Nepeta chuckled and brushed some hair back from her shoulder with her knuckles. The gesture reminded him that her strife specibus was clawkind, that she was and had always been dangerous. Her hair slipped over her shoulder again as she bent to open one of her packs; it had gotten longer since the last time Karkat had seen her, thick and wild. “Sometimes I play with animals instead of hunting them, you know!” She spread a white towel out and set equipment on it: more gauze, a roll of something else that looked thicker and kind of wet, additional antiseptic and a pain-numbing gel. “They don’t understand words, but they still like to be talked to, especially if you’re going to paw at them like this.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Karkat cringed as he exposed Dave’s injury to light again. It looked even worse than before, somehow, though it wasn’t really bleeding anymore. Parts had gone yellow or darkened purple-blue, like his wrist, and the angle…really wasn’t right. “Urgh. I, uh. I think it’s broken, Nepeta.”

“He did step in a _cholerbear trap._ Move now, you’re in the way.”

Dave drawled something peevish, but he only opened his eyes halfway as Karkat and Nepeta switched places. Nepeta made a dismayed clicking noise in her throat and then held her tongue between her teeth as she surveyed the damage. She looked kind of stupid, and Karkat found the familiarity soothing. Slightly.

“Will he be all right? Is it infected, do we have to amputate?”

“Shhhhh,” she said without looking away. “Stop furrightening him, most animals can scent fear.” Karkat shut his mouth, and she swallowed, sat up on her knees. “Can—can you hold him? I don’t want him to thrash too much and hurt himself.”

“Karkat?” Dave was looking right at him, now, pressing his lips together in a thin, white line to mask his rising panic. He asked something in his stupid alien tongue again, looked down at Nepeta and his leg, back up to Karkat. “Karkat. Okay?”

Yeah, fuck. Okay. “Stop looking at me like that, you pathetic, half-deceased imbecile.” Karkat slid one arm around Dave’s back and slipped the other under his arm, held him fast even as Dave made a small startled noise that Karkat could only interpret as _???_. “Yes, you’ll be okay. Nepeta knows what she’s doing, and also, should not fucking tell me if she doesn’t, she should maintain the illusion of competence until this is over, please and fucking thank you.”

He recognized her giggle as nervous, but Nepeta had always been a trooper, he guessed. “Aye-aye, Vantas, sir!” She rearranged her limbs a little, braced herself, and then added, “Equius will be soooo purroud to hear you’ve learned manners.”

“Equius can politely fuck my dry, fetid ass with a bar of lye soap.”

Dave’s body jerked when Nepeta’s fingers only grazed his swollen skin, and Karkat leaned more weight onto him, murmuring nonsense comforts into his strange, rounded ear. _You’re okay, you’re okay, it’ll be over soon, you won’t even feel it._ Did it count as lying if Dave couldn’t even understand him?

Because Dave certainly felt it. The cry tore out of him, sharp and loud, and then he was clutching the back of Karkat’s shirt with his good hand, pressing his face into his shoulder, muffling further agonized, sobbing noises into cloth, muscle, and skin. Dave was _hot,_ Karkat realized, skin burning against his own and damp with sweat, and he just bit his lip and held on as Nepeta worked blind to find the breaks in bone and set them. Then, with a horrible, grinding sound that made Karkat break into cold sweat all over and Dave choke on air, it was over.

“All done,” Nepeta said shakily, leaning back to wipe her brow. “It was only broken in t-two places.”

“Only,” said Karkat, and held onto Dave through the rest of the ordeal, as Nepeta washed the leg again, put the medicines on, bound it first with a fresh layer of gauze and then the thicker stuff that he recognized as auto-plaster, which would dry stiff as rock and keep him from moving and shifting the bones out of place. He held on when she repeated the process (much easier this time, thank God) on Dave’s hand. He didn’t really have a choice. Turned out Dave was a real clingy motherfucker.

Nepeta laced her fingers together, squeezed her hands hard between her knees to keep them from shaking. “Dave? Anywhere else?” She freed one hand and waved at her whole body. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Dave blinked uncomprehendingly, shaking in Karkat’s arms. Karkat nudged Dave’s temple with his nose and then nodded at the gauze, at the rest of the medical supplies. “Do you need more boo-boo shit for your ouchies, asshole?” It didn’t come out anywhere near harsh. Maybe he was shaking, too. Shaken, for sure.

Dave gulped, then shook his head and finally pushed Karkat away. He said something, a low negative, maybe, and turned his face aside, wiped at his eyes.

Nepeta’s face softened. She leaned past Karkat, hesitated, and then placed the back of her hand carefully against Dave’s forehead. Karkat stiffened at the salacious display of pale near-infidelity, but even as her cheeks flushed green, she frowned. “Karkat, let me feel yours?” she asked, and, astounded, he allowed the touch.

“Fever,” she said the instant he figured out what she was doing. She bit her lip and started fussing with a lock of her hair. “I think. It’s hard to tell, I don’t know what his baseline tempawature should be. Karkat, has he had any food? Or water?”

“He drank a little, earlier.” He watched Dave, but even though Dave had to know they were talking about him, he wouldn’t look at them. Heaving a sigh, Karkat continued, “But I didn’t even think to try food. Can he eat what we eat, you think?”

Nepeta shrugged and shook her head, curls flying. “I don’t know, but he needs to get nutrients somehow.” She chewed her lip a moment, then said, “Try grubloaf? It’s purrty innocuous, as far as foods go. Simple carbs and protein.”

“Okay, yeah. I’ll get him a slice.” Karkat stood, feeling like he’d sat there for years, and only then did Dave crack his eyes open, lift his head. Karkat gentled his voice. “Stay with Nepeta, okay? She’ll take care of you. I’m just visiting the food preparation block, I’ll be right back.”

“…Okay,” Dave replied, and then muttered something that was probably, _whatever, fuckface, it’s not like I understand a word that exits your seedflap,_ and closed his eyes again. The faint grey-green tinge was back. Karkat left at a brisk walk.

When he came back with a thick slice of grubloaf and a fresh glass of water, Nepeta had moved down to Dave’s feet again, and her second pack was open. His wrist cuff was already lying empty on the floor. Nepeta kept up a soft stream of chatter as she examined the tracker shackled to Dave’s ankle, and Karkat’s pitysack did a weird, uncomfortable thing. He’d been so bad to this girl, what the fuck, and she’d already put up with so much rancid hoofbeast shit and here she was, committing treason. Or, well. Adding a little more treason to the heaping loads they’d all cannonballed into.

Shit. It wasn’t _pity_ -pity, of course, just the horrendously guilty and painful hatefriendly kind. Past Karkat had been such a nook. He’d have to deal with this later, he owed Nepeta that much.

Karkat sat near Dave’s head and put the glass down, showed him the plate. Dave looked at him with such glossy skepticism that Karkat forgot he’d been surreptitiously crying into his shirt not a minute ago. “It’s grubloaf, piss-skillet. You eat it. See?” He pulled off one soft corner and popped it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “There, not poisoned. Not that I would, after all the trouble we went through to put your shattered ass back together. You want some?”

Dave’s expression remained unconvinced, but he took the plate when Karkat offered again, allowed him to sit him up and then sit behind him to keep him from falling back down. Nepeta just murmured once at the slight change in angle and continued working on the tracker with small-tipped tools Karkat didn’t know the name of.

With only one hand, Dave couldn’t pull the slice apart like Karkat had, so Karkat reached over to help him, breaking it into little chunks so it wouldn’t be so hard to eat. “Or you could just stuff the whole thing in your piehole,” he muttered, but Dave seemed content to pick at the smaller pieces. He pressed one between his fingers for a moment, observing the consistency, then placed it carefully in his mouth. Made a face. Chewed and swallowed it anyway.

“Good boy,” said Karkat, and decided to leave him to it.

Nepeta was working hard, loose hair brushing her face, but Karkat was an idiot and opened his big mouth anyway. “So how did you even get here so fast? I thought you were stationed at the other side of this solar system.”

“Murrr, well, I was! I am.” She held her tongue between her teeth again and poked gently in with what looked like a tiny awl, and grinned when something clicked. “But I guess Sollux was worried about you, too! He went _way_ over galactic speed regulations to get me here. Couldn’t stay, though he told me to tell you to fuck yourself sideways in both holes for waking him up at this hour of day, nookwhiffer.”

Fuck, he missed Sollux. “I didn’t know the two of you were so close.”

She laughed, and it was less nervous this time and more real, more like the bright, kind of annoyingly chipper giggle he remembered. “Sollux and I hooked up more than two purrigees ago, Karkat!”

“What. _What?_ What the fuck, why wasn’t I informed of this, what—what _quadrant_ would you even be in?”

Dave looked up, halfway alarmed, but Nepeta patted his shin reassuringly. “Well, you know how he is with Fefurry, and of course he and Aradia still have their…whatefur-it-is they have going on.” She picked up a new tool and went back to work. “I still don’t know what quadrant that is, do you?”

“I think they’ve flipped their shit so many times they’ve gone red-black-pale colorblind,” he replied. “So…”

“So, ashen!” she reported, and he nodded.

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense, it’s the only one you both definitely have open. Who’s the third leaf, though? Oh—”

“Eridan,” they both said in unison, and then made the same grimace. Dave looked from one to the other like he was watching a racket-propelled felted ball troll sports match.

Karkat ran a hand roughly through his own hair, ruffled it disgustedly. “You’re the middle leaf with _Eridan?”_ he asked, then felt bad. “I mean, okay, I guess he’s not as bad as he could be…”

“No, he is,” Nepeta told him seriously. “But he and Sollux would be absolutely pawful together and you know it! Not to mention what that would do to poor Fefurry. Someone had to do _something.”_

Karkat stared, then sighed. “You’re way too nice for your own good, Nepeta.”

“What the fuck are you goons yakking about,” Dave said, or something like it, in his weird monotone language.

Nepeta blinked, caught off-guard by the odd sound of words her thinkpan couldn’t parse as such, then laughed apologetically. “Sorry, Dave! Just gossiping, you know how it is.” She focused on her work again, but then replied belatedly, “Equius says the same thing, you know. That I’m too nice, and someone’s going to take advantage of it.”

Karkat squirmed. Case in point.

“Aha!” she said before he could find the words he wanted, and the tracker released a sad powering-down whirr and clicked open. She removed it from Dave’s ankle and set it aside, and Dave abandoned the half-eaten plate to Karkat and leaned over to feel his chafed joint, to let out his first breath of relief as air touched his skin.

Free. Or closer to it, anyway. In his condition, he’d be trapped at Karkat’s hive for a while, but at least he wasn’t marked as property now.

Dave looked up to catch Nepeta smiling at him, and he stilled in indecision for a moment. Finally, he tilted his head a little, crooked his fingers at her. “Nepta?”

“Nepeta,” she corrected him patiently, happily, and obliged him by leaning forward.

He leaned toward her, too, and—with no sudden movements, as carefully as she’d treated him before—lightly touched her head. Rubbed between the horns.

He said something, nothing either of them could understand, and then, for the first time, offered them a shy, wobbling smile.

Nepeta’s cheeks went from zero to pure olive in nothing flat, but then she covered her burning face with both hands and laughed, mortified and delighted all at once.

“Karkat, Karkat, we can _nefur_ tell Equius,” she said, and patted Dave’s arm blindly, grinning with all her teeth.

"I didn't know you were a hivewrecking _deviant_ , Dave," Karkat added, fighting down a smile of his own.

Dave was obviously kind of fucked up, because he didn’t look even a little bit scared of either of them.


End file.
